The transport shuttle, the Iron Vector, slammed into the planet’s atmosphere with a roar that sounded like tearing metal.

  Sector 7-G was a cosmic bruise, a graveyard of systems where gravity forgot its manners. The planet itself, a nameless chunk of rock cataloged only as Anomalous Body 92, didn’t have a magnetic field strong enough to deflect the solar wind, meaning the atmosphere was a cocktail of charged particles and necrotic fungal spores.

  “Helmet seals tight,” Valen’s voice rasped over the squad comms, my own consciousness piloting the words from light-years away in the comfort of the Spire on Kyris-9. “Don’t breathe deep. Unless you like your lungs turning into glass.”

  “Atmosphere breathable,” the Sylph, Rael’a, muttered, tapping her wrist-comp nervously. Her wings were bound tight against her back to prevent them from snapping in the turbulence. “Barely. But the mana density is off the charts. It tastes like… old blood.”

  Captain Joryn deployed the teams with the indifference of a man spending cheap coin.

  “Team Valen,” he barked, pointing a gloved finger at me, Rael’a, and a hulking lizard-man named Thrax whose scales were scarred with acid burns. “Take the eastern ruins. Since it was your scanners that picked up a structural anomaly that doesn't match the geological profile. Check it. Report every day. If you go dark, we will assume you’re dead. And remember, we leave in two weeks. If you are not here by then we will not wait.”

  We moved out. The ground crunched under our boots — fossilized mycelial mats that hadn’t seen life since the local star went supernova.

  The ruins were impressive. Colossal ribs of black stone jutted from the purple moss, covered in glyphs that made my [Void Perception] itch. They weren’t carved; they were grown.

  “Temple architecture,” Thrax rumbled, his voice like grinding tectonic plates. “Pre-Imperial. Maybe even pre-Federation.”

  We trekked for hours. The wind howled through the stone ribs like a choir of the damned. My Ashen Seeker, tucked safely inside the subspace inventory of the clone but feeding data directly to my mind, pulsed faster.

  The needle wasn't spinning anymore. It was locked.

  We found the entrance in a valley shielded by overlapping, static energy storms. It wasn’t a door; it was more like a wound in the planet’s crust, framed by obsidian monoliths that hummed with a counter-frequency to the storm.

  “No signal,” Rael’a tapped her comms, frustration marring her delicate features. “The interference is blocking the uplink to the ship. We’re dark.”

  “Convenient,” I muttered, feigning annoyance. “Let’s go inside. If the Artifact is here, Joryn can pay us double after we come back from ‘death’.”

  The interior was a sharp contrast to the chaotic surface. The air was still, cool, and smelled of ozone and preserved starlight. Bioluminescent moss clung to the high ceilings, casting a pale, underwater glow.

  We navigated traps that had rusted into uselessness — gravity-spikes that failed to trigger, mana-drains that had run dry eons ago.

  Finally, we reached the structure.

  It was a circular chamber, vast and echoing. The presence of mana was much stronger within, whatever security system opting to sever its external connection to ensure internal integrity. We navigated through more traps spotted by maximizing my Perception, and entered an underground passway.

  After a few minutes of intertwining pathways and various puzzles bypassed by quick a few uses of [Void Walk] disguised as simple teleportation to my group, we finally arrived.

  In the center, hovering above a plinth of unidentifiable white metal, encased in a field of static time, was the Prize.

  The Ancestor’s Compass.

  It didn’t look like a navigational tool. It looked like a galaxy trapped in a jar. A sphere of shifting, liquid starlight, constantly rearranging itself into new constellations.

  “By the Gods,” Rael’a breathed, stepping forward, greed warring with reverence in her eyes. “It’s real. The House will pay a kingdom for this.”

  She reached for her secondary, short-range comms unit. “Captain! We found it! Sector 7-G! It’s in the—”

  I didn’t use a spell. I used my Domain — simple, brutal, effective. I crushed the unit in her hand.

  Rael’a shrieked, dropping the shattered plastic. Thrax spun around with surprising speed, raising his heavy vibro-axe.

  “What are you doing? Fool! Do you know what they will do to us if we betray them?” the lizard roared, charging.

  I raised a hand and summoned a massive amount of mana using [Apex Mana Authority].

  Gravity slammed down. Not on the room, but on them. Thrax froze mid-swing, his muscles straining against an invisible mountain. Rael’a collapsed, pinned to the floor by the air itself.

  “Relax,” Valen’s voice said, calm and cold. “Nobody needs to die yet. I’m just… amending the contract.”

  I walked past them to the plinth.

  The time-stasis field was impressive. High Tier 8 complexity. Designed to keep the contents perfectly preserved against the entropy of the universe.

  But Time was one of my domains. And the Void Star was the key.

  I touched the field with my Hunger. I didn’t break it; I drank the barrier. The static time dissolved like sugar in water, rushing into my core as raw potential.

  The Artifact dropped into my hand. It was cold. Heavy.

  You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.

  I felt the pulse of Divine Mana inside it. The same signature Millimos used, but older. More refined. Ancient.

  “It’s a divination artifact,” I realized, scanning it and compressing it into a memory packet to send to Kasian back home. “It doesn’t point towards a location. It points to Fate. Or specifically… it points to the path of least resistance for succeeding in the user’s intended task.”

  No wonder Millimos was desperate. If you have a map that tells you which future leads to victory, you never lose. And right now, House Vorr was losing.

  “Are you insane?” Rael’a whispered from the floor, tears of pain leaking from her eyes. “Joryn will kill you. And even if you escape him, House Vorr will hunt you and all of us to the edge of the galaxy. You have condemned us all!”

  “Joryn is about to be very busy,” I said.

  I opened the Maw.

  I swallowed the Compass. It vanished into the inter-dimensional pocket of my Hunger, safe from scans, safe from retrieval spells. It sat there, suspended in the Void, next to the pile of random materials, consumables and items I stored for use.

  Then, the setup.

  “You two,” I said to the paralyzed mercenaries. “You’re going to stay here. Quietly. I’m leaving you supplies. And a distress beacon set on a six-hour delay.”

  I tossed a survival pack onto the floor.

  “Wait for the Kyorian sweepers. Good luck.”

  I didn’t wait for an answer. I turned and ran, exploding a few devices near the entrance that should leave a subtle mana signature in the rock that should trace back to house Lyras.

  I activated the full capabilities of my clone. I moved faster than sound, burning through Valen’s lower mana reserves, turning him into a comet running on rocket fuel.

  I reached the temporary camp Captain Joryn had set up near the landing zone. The other teams were filtering back, tired, dusty, and empty-handed.

  I didn’t sneak. I walked right into the center of the camp, limping, my armor scorched by a small self-inflicted plasma burn.

  “Captain!” I shouted, waving the datapad Nyx had prepared with the false codes.

  Joryn turned, scowling. “Where is your team, mercenary? And where is your report?”

  “Ambush!” I yelled, collapsing near a crate. “We found a signature! The ruins! But it was a trap! High-Tier Stealth operatives!”

  He quickly scanned me with a device and found subtle signatures that showed I was in contact with the artifact but did not currently hold it, unable to track it into the Void. Exactly how we planned it.

  “Who? They dare...” Joryn’s face went pale, then purple with rage. “How many?”

  “I am not sure. They took it!” I lied, putting every ounce of my acting skill into the desperation. “Rael’a and Thrax are down! They have a stealth shuttle in the canyon! They’re extracting!”

  Pandemonium erupted. Joryn screamed orders. Mercenaries scrambled for their weapons.

  I used the chaos.

  While Joryn was screaming at his comms officer to triangulate a signal that didn’t exist, I slipped into the main transport shuttle, the Iron Vector.

  The pilot was outside, checking the landing struts.

  I punched the door lock with a precise kinetic pulse. It hissed open.

  I jumped into the cockpit.

  “Sorry,” I muttered to the empty seat.

  I engaged the thrusters. The ship roared to life.

  “Hey!” Joryn screamed from the ramp, instantly casting a spell. The mana bolt pinged harmlessly off my barrier. “Valen! What are you doing?”

  I felt him start to summon a stronger skill, his Domain flaring to life, but it was too late.

  I punched the throttle. The ship shot up into the violent sky of the Blind Sector, leaving a shockwave of dust.

  But I wasn’t going to get away. So, I was going to leave a message.

  I activated the ship’s comms array. I broadcasted a message using House Lyras encryption key on their secured frequency — one that Nyx obtained after infiltrating the Kyorian spies in charge of observing them.

  “This is Lyras Actual. Asset secured. Package acquired. Extraction complete. Long live the Storm.”

  Every elite Vorr intelligence officer monitoring station in the sector would eventually figure it out since their communications post would flag it.

  House Lyras did not shy from openly showing hostility when they enact their plans, so we used it to our advantage.

  Then, I engaged the self-destruct protocol for my clone.

  I locked the controls on a vector toward deep space, aiming for a chaotic nebula where debris would be hard to recover.

  “Goodbye, Valen,” I whispered.

  I closed my eyes.

  I didn’t eject.

  I dissolved the link.

  I pulled my consciousness back, retreating through the vast distance of the link, back through the Spire network, abandoning the mana construct.

  As my awareness faded from the clone, the last thing I saw was the dashboard flashing red and the stars turning into streaks of light.

  The Iron Vector would have turned into an expanding sphere of plasma high in the upper atmosphere. Just debris and a signal pointing to House Vorr’s rivals.

  The Kyorians would be confused on how we extracted the Artifact before the explosion, adding more chaos to the equation.

  I snapped my eyes open.

  I was sitting in the control room of the Spire on Kyris-9. The cool, clean air of the mountain peak rushed into my lungs, tasting sweet after the metallic tang of the clone’s senses.

  “You alright?” Arthur asked, looking up from a holographic monitor displaying energy spikes in the remote sector.

  “Done,” I said, my voice hoarse. “The pot is stirred.”

  I stood up. I reached into my chest — figuratively.

  I accessed the [Void-Star’s Hunger] storage.

  I pulled.

  Reality warped in my hand. A sphere of shifting starlight materialized.

  The Ancestor’s Compass.

  It hummed in the quiet of the Spire, untouched by the explosion, untraceable by the Kyorians who were currently frantically scanning a debris cloud light-years away.

  I looked at the swirling galaxy trapped in the glass. It felt… sentient. It was searching for a connection, for a destiny to map.

  “Hello there,” I grinned. “Let’s see where you point.”

  Nyx stepped up beside me, wiping a dagger she hadn’t used.

  “Was the mission success? Enough to cause tension?” she asked.

  “Probably enough for a Civil War,” I corrected. “House Vorr just lost their hope. And House Lyras just got framed for the theft of the century. Millimos will have to hunt them down. They’ll be too busy killing each other for a while to look at a ‘backwater’ planet like ours.”

  I put the Compass away.

  “This buys us time,” I said. “Valuable time. We have two weeks until the Coronation. We have a planet full of resources here. We have a Spire. We can spend a few more days gathering more intel on their reactions while we figure this thing out, then we can head back.”

  I walked to the observation deck, looking out at the distant, sprawling mining city of Kyris-Alpha below us in the valley. The lights were twinkling, unaware that the galaxy had just shifted on its axis.

  “The Kyorians think they are the players,” I whispered. “They think we are just pieces on the board.”

  I touched the bracelet. It pulsed — strong, fed, and ready.

  “Let’s show them what happens when the pieces start moving themselves.”

  We had the map. We had the intel. And now, we had sowed the seeds of chaos.

  It was time to build a Kingdom in the dark.